The tremendous outpouring in NYC on Sunday (and it should be added, perhaps more importantly, at Wall Street on Monday (#FloodWallStreet)) over the global climate emergency has some commentators on the Left convinced that the grassroots will now be able to solve the ever-spreading climate catastrophe.

The massive People's Climate March, the most hopeful, diverse, photogenic, energizing, and often hilarious march I've joined in 52 years of activism -- and one of the biggest, at 400,000 strong -- has delivered a simple message: we can and will rid the planet of fossil fuels and nuclear power, we will do it at the grassroots, it will be demanding and difficult to say the least, but it will also have its moments of great fun.

With our lives and planet on the line, our species has responded.

Ostensibly, this march was in part meant to influence policy makers. That just goes with the territory.

But in fact what it showed was an amazingly broad-based, diverse, savvy, imaginative, and very often off-beat movement with a deep devotion to persistence and cause, and a great flair for fun.

…

Because what must happen most of all is organizing from the grassroots against each and every polluting power plant, unwanted permit, errant funding scheme, stomach-turning bribe, planet-killing frack well, soon-to-melt reactor, and much much more.

Winning this fight for global survival will be done not with one great triumph over corporate hypocrisy and greed. Instead it'll require death by a million cuts, with countless small victories won day-to-day at the unseen grassroots. As the man said, this revolution will not be televised.

Those “death by a million cuts” do not seem to have started yet.

Consider the following:

The UN Climate meeting that began today resulted in two distinct outcomes.

First, Brazil refused to sign onto a deforestation agreement. The Amazon Rainforest, which resides primarily in Brazil, is by itself responsible for 20% of the oxygen that we breathe and is correspondingly a major carbon absorber. Protecting it from massive deforestation therefore is crucial to protecting the planet. Ignoring the vast outpouring of citizens to defend the planet, the Brazilian government claimed that it had not been party to the deforestation agreement. They failed to mention that they had been invited repeatedly to participate in the preparation of the agreement to protect the Rainforest, but had declined.

Second, the Obama Administration refused to agree to charge for carbon use. This criminal action – anyone in authority who refuses to step up to defend the planet is committing a crime against the planet and all of its species - comes simultaneous to Obama’s climate speech today, contemporaneous as well with his bombers carrying out brutal airstrikes in Syria. As reported by NPR:

"We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace our responsibility to combat it. We will do our part."

But he also says countries that are struggling to build their own industries can't repeat the mistakes others have made in what he calls the "dirty phase" of development. He also notes partnerships with China and with African nations.

Saying that the effort to fight climate change can only succeed if both developed and developing nations join with the U.S., Obama says, "Nobody gets a pass."

He later adds, "Nobody can sit on the sidelines on this issue."

This “not sitting on the sidelines” decision to not carbon charge and thereby discourage its use is consistent with Obama signing rather than vetoing in 2013 a Congressional bill that called for the US to ignore the EU’s plans to attack the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions, airliners.

In recent years, Europe has tried to make aviation pay under its emissions trading system (ETS), and with good reason.

Airlines are the fastest growing source of global greenhouse gas output. Already responsible for 5% of the world's annual global warming, by 2030 their emissions are projected to double from 2005 levels.

Yet last November [2012], Obama signed a Congressional act authorising the US transport secretary to prevent US airlines from participating in the ETS. (Emphasis added)

Obama’s speeches about the importance of addressing global warming parallels his speeches about how Guantanamo, torture, and indefinite detention are not consistent with “American values.” That is, he makes speeches pretending that he is decrying his very own policies. This is his particular variant of having your cake and eating it too: articulately pose as being on the side of the angels while doing the work of the devil. No wonder Wall Street gave him at least $20 million more for his 2008 campaign for the presidency than it gave to his opponent John McCain. They knew that when Obama spoke publicly about clamping down on Wall Street that he was merely doing PR.

I want to return to the question now of whether or not the growing climate catastrophe can be solved on the grassroots level, as some people think seeing the outpouring of public demand for this in the past few days.

What should be clear – and isn’t remotely yet clear enough – is that it doesn’t matter to those who hold power and it doesn’t matter to this system of capitalism-imperialism how many people are in the streets if the people in the streets remain within the confines of politics as usual. You cannot defeat the enemy to our planet with a “million cuts” and by not recognizing what you are really up against and what it is going to take to end this drive to extinction that the powers that be are hell bent on taking the whole planet into.

The actions in the last few days by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, representing the wishes of billions of people on the planet, are wonderful. But they are not anywhere nearly enough.

As revolutionaries in China said during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: “Cast Away Illusions. Prepare for Struggle.”

Elaine Brower of World Can't Wait speaking at the NYC Stop the War on Iran rally 2/4/12

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This site aims to accomplish two related goals. First, it complements Dennis Loo's book Globalization and the Demolition of Society so that people reading the book can get more deeply into it. (See navigation bar above, labeled "GDS Book Annotations"). We believe that his book is a landmark, providing a solid foundation for politics of a new path. Taking such a path is critical to humanity and the planet's future. As his book's dust jacket states:

[F]ree market fundamentalism - also known as neoliberalism - makes us not more secure or prosperous: it tears the social fabric and undermines security, leading inevitably to disasters on the individual, regional, and global levels.

Neoliberalism is based on the mantra that market forces should run everything. It aims to eliminate job and income security, the social safety net (including welfare and other social guarantees), unions, pensions, public services, and the governmental regulation of corporations. It consequently undermines the basis for people to voluntarily cooperate with authority as almost everyone is increasingly left by themselves to face gargantuan private interests, with governmental and corporate authority ever more indifferent to the public’s welfare.

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